


The Right Partner

by jamwrites



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Finnpoe - Freeform, Force-Sensitive Finn, Gay, M/M, POV Finn (Star Wars), Star Wars - Freeform, Stormpilot, The Last Jedi - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-13
Updated: 2017-12-13
Packaged: 2019-02-14 05:43:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13001091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamwrites/pseuds/jamwrites
Summary: Based on The Last Jedi encyclopedia thing about Poe's ring."Finn hated prepping for battles.He hated the quiet medbay that he had to oversee, the beds he made knowing that in a few short hours they would be filled with bloodied bodies and pain and suffering, bodies that were, just that morning, in perfect health. He hated knowing that the soldiers who made it to his medbay were the lucky ones; their friends would soon die in the vast and unforgiving jaws of open space, sucked out of a hole blasted in a Resistance cruiser’s fuselage.He hated the waiting for Poe to be the next body on his cot."





	The Right Partner

**Author's Note:**

> Thing about Poe's ring: "Poe wears the wedding ring of his late mother, Shara Bey, on a necklace, waiting to share it someday with the right partner." Post link: 
> 
> http://ghostnerd.tumblr.com/post/168286744082/amilynholdo-waiting-to-share-it-someday-with
> 
> I just needed something to make me happy and calm me down before TLJ hits this week because I'm really scared. Dante, this one's for you and your friend (thanks for the hc ideas).

Finn hated prepping for battles.

He hated the quiet medbay that he had to oversee, the beds he made knowing that in a few short hours they would be filled with bloodied bodies and pain and suffering, bodies that were, just that morning, in perfect health. He hated knowing that the soldiers who made it to his medbay were the lucky ones; their friends would soon die in the vast and unforgiving jaws of open space, sucked out of a hole blasted in a Resistance cruiser’s fuselage.

He hated the waiting for Poe to be the next body on his cot.

He hated the sense of relief he felt every time it wasn’t.

Because it was _some_ body, and being grateful for their pain instead of his boyfriend’s felt wrong.

At least he didn’t have to worry about Poe being captured and interrogated by the First Order on this battle. One way or another, there would be no First Order after this, no Resistance, no war. Finn only had to stand the stench of blood for one more fight.

The doors to the medbay hissed open and Finn’s muscles coiled, reacting, hand already half-reaching for his stabilizer when he saw who it was. His body relaxed.

“Hey babe,” Finn said, absentmindedly accepting Poe’s kiss on the cheek. “Aren’t you supposed to be in the hangar? If Holdo catches you in here…”  
Poe kissed him again. “I’m not scared of Amilyn. You’re talking to the guy who lived through years of training under Organa herself.”

Poe’s voice hitched on the mention of Organa’s name. Finn wished he could help, fix it for Poe somehow, but he couldn’t. When Organa had disappeared, Poe had been inconsolable. It had torn Finn apart to have so much medical knowledge and have all of it be useless in the face of Poe’s pain. Things had gotten better since then, but Finn could tell Poe still hurt over the loss of his idol. No, more than that; something closer to his mother.

“Nah,” Poe was saying, snaking his arms through Finn’s and rubbing his back. “BB-8’s better at prepping the ship than I am. I wanted to come see you.”

Poe bit his lip, and that’s what gave him away; Finn knew when his boyfriend was trying to skirt his way around something important.

Gently, Finn put his hand on Poe’s jaw. “Hey. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I’m okay. You know me.”

“You’re not okay.”

Poe sighed, disentangling himself from Finn’s arms, sitting heavily on one of the cots. His head sank between his knees for a moment, just a moment, then bobbed back up again.

“I just...I’ve made it through this entire war. We both have. And if Amilyn’s plan holds out, then this’ll be the last time we have to fight.” Poe raised his eyes to meet Finn. “And some part of me feels like I’m not going to make it through this one.”

“Poe--”

“So that’s why,” Poe said, rising and cutting Finn off. He reached into the neck of his shirt and pulled out the small ring on a chain he always wore. “I’m giving you this. It was my mother’s. My father gave it to her when they married. And then she gave it to me, and she told me that it was for when I found the right partner.”

Finn pushed the ring away, heart beating, pounding against his chest. “Poe, I’m not taking this. You’re coming back, alright? You’re coming back.”

“But if I _don’t,_ Finn, if I don’t--” Poe’s voice died in his throat, and he ducked away, but not before Finn saw the tears glistening in his eyes. “I need you to know. In case I don’t come back, I need you to know that I’ve found him. The right partner.”

Hands trembling, Poe slid the ring onto Finn’s finger, then flowed into a kiss. It was the hardest kiss Finn had ever gotten, with Poe spreading his palm over the back of Finn’s head and drawing him in closer as if he were in danger of disappearing. It was dizzying, wheeling, sparking, just like every time they made out, but this time Finn also felt something horrible between them that Poe was trying to kiss away. When he opened his eyes, he saw the tears running freely down Poe’s cheeks.

“Don’t do that,” Finn said, breaking off the kiss, sucking in air. “Don’t kiss me goodbye.”

Poe smiled sadly at him, then turned and strode toward the door. “I just did. Sorry.”

The thought that this might be the last time Finn ever saw him was gut wrenching.

“Poe!” Finn called.

“Yeah?”

Finn locked eyes with Poe, trying to make him understand. “As long as there’s light, we’ve got a chance.”

The ring on Finn’s finger burned. He could feel the traces of Shara Bey’s energy on the metal, memories of her presence anchored in the Force by this little object, and he wondered when the last time Poe had seen his mother was like. Had Shara given Poe this ring and then left, flying away to give her life for the cause? He couldn’t tell. Shara’s presence was too far removed, his own training in the Force too incomplete to pry further.

A ghost of a smile on Poe’s lips. And then he was gone.

 

**

 

When the battle began, Finn had no more time to worry. His word narrowed down into directing the flow of carnage in his medbay and communicating with the retrieval ships who worked tirelessly during the battle to swoop in and spirit away the wounded from Resistance cruisers. After two hours his voice went hoarse from shouting commands across the room. After four he felt drained, but there was no choice but to push through.

His com wasn’t powerful enough to connect directly to Poe’s, and Vice Admiral Holdo was far too busy in the war room for Finn to bother her with an inquiry about one pilot out of many. He tried reaching out through the Force to feel Poe, but all he could see was the miasmic chaos of the war, punctuated by two lone bright spots of Force energy that had to be Rey and Kylo. Rey, Finn was less worried about. She had already ripped her deadbeat cousin a new asshole once a few years back, and Finn was confident she could do it again. Rose was safe in the lower hangars, patching up ships that came limping back. The only way she would get hurt was if their entire cruiser went, and that would mean Finn was stardust too.

No, it was Poe, flying around in a rickety X-Wing held together by his prayers and Rose’s adhesive strips, that really worried him. It had always seemed to Finn that the Resistance’s ships fell apart if you even looked at them sideways. And now they were going up against the full wrath of the First Order, all those lasers flying in every direction, it only would take one good hit--

“ _Chief Medical Officer Finn, please report to Emergency Reconstruction_.”

The PA call yanked Finn out of his thoughts. He washed his hands in a nearby sink, wiped them on his pants, and hurried to the next person he would do all in his power to prevent from becoming a corpse.

If only he could do the same for Poe.

 

**

 

Midway through the battle, all communications with attacking forces were lost. Finn felt a wave of Holdo’s anxiety sweep over him from far above in the war room. Past that, he heard nothing.

 

A while later, their cruiser blacked out.

“One,” Finn counted. He twisted the ring on his finger. “Two...three…” If it got to fifteen, he was going to have to start switching patients over to emergency life support.

The power flickered back on.

  

 

A spike of fear and pain from Rey. She reached out through the Force and grabbed Finn as if she were right beside him in the room, squeezing his hand for reassurance. He pushed calming, reassuring thoughts towards her until her grip loosened.

A small flash of a vision of her picking up her blue-bladed saberstaff, clutching a wound on her midriff, roaring, charging whatever enemy was before her.

 

 

A dozen more small moments like these, little punctuation marks of emotion in an endless ocean of carnage. And all Finn could do was wait.

 

 

And then, all at once, it was over. Admiral Holdo’s voice came over the PA, announcing the First Order’s full retreat, or what was left of them to retreat. Finn allowed himself to rest for a single moment, her orders washing over him like a tide.

But his work was only just beginning. Soon more patients were pouring in, the damaged Resistance cruisers limping back and discharging their wounded. While he stitched and cauterized and set bones, he sent out searching probes through the web of energy surrounding them all, trying to find him. But there was too much. Everything was a mess. The Force felt inflamed, throbbing, as though it had just been beaten senseless and its nerves were raw, probably from all the pain concentrated in point of space. Finn could hardly get anything comprehensible from the network of energy at all.

During a brief quiet moment, he buckled.

Finn knelt on the ground, holding his head between his hands, squeezing the tears from his eyes. He couldn’t’ take this not-knowing any longer. Every second more X-Wings returned to their hangars, which meant every second Poe didn’t walk through the door only increased the likelihood that...that--

_Don’t even think it. If you think it, it’s real._

_\--that he’s dead._

He was teetering on the edge of something very deep and very dark. Sweat prickled at his forehead. There was no way he could do this anymore. The room was beginning to spin, his breathing hitching in his chest, his lungs unable to fill. Panic filled his ragged throat. And--

_Calm._

A low, ringing tone filled his ears. Warm colors danced before his eyes. Finn felt Rey’s presence reaching out to him, squeezing his hand as he had done for her. She was too far for them to speak, exactly, but he could feel her mind, and she was hugging him as tightly as she could. She poked curiously at the ring, and when Finn went to show her in the Force what it was, he was hit with a deluge of Shara Bey.

 

_A warm planet. A green planet. Growing things waving against a blue, blue sky, creatures flying overhead._

_A tree. And beneath it, a boy._

_Shara smiled as she sat next to her son. He was getting so big, now. Soon he would be able to pilot a ship without even sitting on her lap._

_“Poe,” she said. “I have something for you.”_

_He looked at her with those big eyes, the ones she had always suspected would make someone fall for him one day. Smiling, Shara slid her wedding ring off her finger and offered it to her son. Kes wouldn’t be angry if he could know what she was doing; in fact, Shara liked to think he would have wanted it this way. She was soon to be joining him anyway. The ring wouldn’t be useful to her for much longer._

_She kissed him on the forehead. “Your father gave this to me when he asked me to marry him. Now...now I think it’s time for you to have it. For when you find the right partner.”_

_From her pocket Shara drew a small silver chain. After looping it through the ring, she gently slid the necklace over Poe’s messy hair._

_“There. It’s yours now, Poe. Take good care of it.”_

 

Finn took in every ounce of her warmth. There was the barest sensation of her whispering something in his ear, though whether it was Shara or Rey, he couldn’t know. Then, floating. The dizziness receded like waves tumbling off a beach. He stumbled away from that yawning void. His throat cleared.

He could breathe again.

Rey’s presence faded in the Force. Sucking in air, Finn raised his head ever so slowly from his hands, and the sounds of the medbay gradually came back; the hurrying too and fro, the language of the medical machines and droids, everything. It was as if Rey’s energy had permeated the room itself, because now the onslaught of bodies had slowed to a trickle, and his staff could walk instead of sprint.

_Thank you._

Wobbling, Finn drew himself to his feet. Nobody looked at him funny; it wasn’t uncommon for medbay staffers to need to take moments to themselves, what with their long hours and gruesome work.

Another tremor in the Force.

At first Finn thought it was Rey again, but then, the unmistakable feel of--

He turned on his heel and ran.

“Move! Please move!” Finn charged through the halls, trying to push people out of the way as gently as he could, sliding against the metal walls when the pathway was too congested. He had felt it. He knew he had.

Though he had been on his feet for who knew how many hours, all the exhaustion had seemingly evaporated from his limbs. Finn poured every last bit of his strength into his run, until finally, blessedly, he burst through the entrance of the X-Wing hangar.

Chest heaving, he took a wild look around.

There.

“ _Poe!_ ” Finn leapt over a railing, ran, vaulted a twittering astromech, and nearly plowed through a hovercraft full of supplies.

Because there he was, climbing out of his X-Wing, pulling off his helmet to reveal that stupidly luscious black hair, sweat and blood pouring down his face. Poe turned around on his ladder, grinned, and jumped the rest of the way.

They met each other at full speed, crashing with a gleeful intensity, laughing, thumping each other on the back, then, finally, kissing, lips practically fighting for space. Poe tasted like sweat and blood but Finn didn’t care; the only thing he could think of was holding this man in front of him, holding him so tight he could never get away again, the feel of his lips, his hair between Finn’s fingers, all of it. He wanted all of Poe.

“Hey, hey, slow down, I’m right here,” Poe said, laughing. Finn could sense the euphoric joy and adrenaline radiating off him like the neutrino flares on the hulls of cruisers. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“No, you’re not. Ever again.”

Finn kissed him again, just because he could, and then pulled Poe into a tight hug. To nobody’s surprise, he felt tears slipping down his cheeks.

A hiccup bubbled from his throat. Finn separated himself from Poe’s arms, then twisted the ring off his finger, offering it to Poe. “Here,” Finn’s smile was wobbly. “Your good luck charm worked.”

Poe made no move for the ring, instead standing and studying it for several long moments. “I told you what it was, Finn. And it wasn’t a good luck charm.” Then Poe looked at him with the same expression he had worn on a landing pad a long time ago, on a planet now very distant, and Finn felt the chords of the Force, tremoring in space, suddenly slide into something resembling a perfect harmony. Even if only for an instant.

Reaching out, Poe took the ring, turned it over once in his hand, then slid it back on Finn’s trembling finger. They knocked foreheads, taking each other in, absorbing what this meant: it meant _them_. Forever.

Poe brushed the back of Finn’s neck, sending goosebumps rippling down his back, and Finn had never been happier.

“Keep it. It suits you.”


End file.
